[Snowpocalypse] Dump Visit (L 1.2)

Rich

To Lemma:

Dumpies Info:
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Trading is tricky, because it's really hard to guess what they think is valuable.

It usually goes like: I scavenge through the piles, and sometimes they watch from a distance. If I'm taking something they don't want, I just walk out with it. The Dump's too big for even the Dumpies to claim everything in it. If they think it's valuable, or if I'm violating some kind of invisible border claim, they'll pull up and tell me to back off. Sometimes I can strike a deal then, sometimes not.

There's a woman, thick braids and dark skin, goes by Marmot, seemed almost friendly. Then there are two guys, Cork and Butter, who never lifted the visors on their helmets. Less friendly at first, but I helped them out with an engine problem.
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Here's Marmot:


Cork:


Butter:


You arrive at the newest excavation and find Marmot, Cork and Butter all staring at this:


Marmot peers at you when you come shushing up in your skis. "Did it call you?" She's talking about the thing in the ground.

"It was under some trash, been there long time." Cork says.

It looks like a small impact crater, Lemma. This thing might be some kind of bomb that didn't go off... or a plane crash... or something.

What do you do?

Transcriptase

"It... well, it might have. Can I look?"

I click out of the skis and move carefully towards the thing. I walk a circle around it, get up close, hold my hands a couple inches from it to feel for heat. If there's nothing, and the Dumpies don't object too strongly, I peel my gloves off and start tapping it, checking the edges to see how deep it goes, that sort of thing.

Transcriptase

Things speak:
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 2, 5. Total: 9), +1 XP

Transcriptase

OOC: 1 question: What has been done most recently to this?

Rich

To Lemma:

Marmot and Cork don't object, they're just as curious as you. Butter seems skittish, but its hard to read emotions under that helmet, you know?

The thing is maybe five feet across and it was once spherical, before it landed here and was crushed. The outer shell was a very sturdy metal. You could reforge it into something real useful.

You see it falling. Falling and on fire. Burning all the junk off the shell. Then it slams into the ice, burning stories deep, cooling, then refreezing again... until now.

Most recently, the Dumpies uncovered and prayed to it for guidance. Butter calls it the Sky Mote. She seems to know something about it.

Transcriptase

Okay, now I'm curious. What I really want is to take it back to my workshop and really figure it out, but I get the feeling that wouldn't go over well. Plus, I'm not dragging it behind me on skis.

Maybe I can talk them into letting me, though. Let's start with Butter.

"Butter, why did you call it the Sky Mote? How did you know it came from the sky? Did it... tell you anything?"

Transcriptase

Read a Person:
(Rolled: 2d6+1. Rolls: 2, 5. Total: 8)

Rich

To Lemma:

Behind her yellow visor, you see Butter's eyes widen. "How did... how did you know I called it that?" Her expression turns dubious and she peers at you, "My great-great grans saw it fall from the sky, that's why. Great-great gramps told her it was a flyplane's shitter, but look! That don't look like no shitter to me!"

Transcriptase

"No, you're right. It's not a shitter. It's old, and I think it was important. I don't know what it is, but... I could tell you more if I could examine it back at my workshop."

OOC: Spend 1 hold to ask "What can I do to get her to let me take the artifact?"

Rich

To Lemma:

Cork barks a laugh, "Best thing we found in a week and you wanna drag it off on your skis?"

Butter hisses a laugh with him, saying nothing more. But you've gotten a look at those curious eyes. You know she led them here, she wants to know about it. Bring her along... hell, she'll help you get something to haul it in.

Transcriptase

"Look, it's all yours, we know that. Finders keepers. I just want to help you talk to it. If I can find some fans out here, I can get my van running and come down here to bring it back. One of you could stick with me, make sure everything's above board."

I look Butter in the eye and give her a chance to volunteer.

Rich

To Lemma:

Sure enough, Butter says flat, "Here's the deal. I'll get a crawler over here, and we drive it back to your shop. Whatever talky talk you do, we both hear. Otherwise, no deal."

Cork cuts in with, "Yo, Butter, I gots dibs on that, too!"

"Take my space heater for a week and shutthefuckup." Butter barks back. That shuts Cork up. Then Butter looks at you.

What do you do?

Transcriptase

"Deal. I can fix my van later. Let's go."

Rich

To LEmma:

Butter scrambles up out of the hole of trash to fetch her crawler. While she's gone, Cork loses interest in you, but Marmot hangs around.

After a bit when she makes sure you're alone, she asks, "How do you do this... talking with things like people? Is it something you can teach?"

Transcriptase

That one really throws me. It feels natural, but I learned things, sure... lots of things, come to think of it, from lots of different people. But people could know what I know and not do what I do.

So, it takes me a second to answer. (That's a thing with me. I don't have normal people's urge to talk to fill silences, and I tend to answer what people actually ask me. So, most people think conversations with me have long, weird pauses in them.)

"I'm not sure I can teach you how to listen. But... I think I could teach you how to learn to listen. If you want to come by my shop sometime, I will try."

Another slightly-too-long pause while I think about how I would do this.

"It will look an awful lot like doing my chores, at first."

One more pause, shorter, slightly less than unbearably awkward, the remembering social graces pause instead of the plumbing the depths of my brain for the truth one.

"Oh, you could come with us and watch me work on this, if you want."

Rich

To Lemma:

Marmot thinks on it for a moment. "If Butter isn't angry about it, I will go and watch. What are your chores? How do they help you see?"

You can hear the lumbering sound of the crawler as it crushes down the top-level of trash and shoves aside debris. Butter will be here in a minute or so.

Transcriptase

"Before you can hear a thing, you have to know how it works, and how it breaks. That tells you what it is trying to be, the space it takes up in the world..." I catch myself. I have, a handful of times, tried explain this to other people and it has not gone well. I'm going to have to try to keep it simple.

"So, to learn, you'll start with maintaining things that aren't broken. After some of that, I will show you how something is broken, and how to fix it. After some of that, you will be able to tell what's broken about some things without me telling you, and fix it on your own."

"One day, maybe, you will think of a way to keep that thing from breaking like that ever again. Or someone will bring in a thing you've never seen, but you will see how it is like all the other things you have seen and still know how to fix it, even before you know what it does."

"But to do that, you will have to replace seals and change oil and sharpen edges and clear blockages and do only what I tell you and work too long into the night and probably hate me a little bit sometimes."

"If that sounds like something you want, come to the workshop any time. I'll make room."

Rich

To Lemma:

Just before Butter arrives, Marmot muses, "Sounds like it will take time. Can I sleep there? Do you have food to share?"

Transcriptase

Oh, right. Food and shelter. I forgot.

"Yes. At the start, if you help me, I'll feed you and we'll find a place for you to sleep. If you stay, I will find tools to be your own. In time, you will be able to take your own jobs and keep what you earn."

As Butter pulls up, I stop talking while I start figuring out how we're going to extract the artifact and strap it into the crawler.

"Now, let's see what the Sky Mote has to say."

Rich

How do you plan to hook up Butter's crawler to get this lump of heavy metal back to the workshop?

Transcriptase

Well, obviously I don't go out into the freeze without some rope. I figure step one is basically a stump pull-- loosen the dirt around the edges of the thing and then hook it to the crawler and try to tow it out of the hole.

Assuming that works, then we're on to the challenge of lifting it a few feet up onto the bed of the crawler. There's three of us, it's 5 feet around, hollowish, but heavier than you'd think... I guess one of Marmot's first lessons is going to be the block and tackle.

I turn to her and say, "We're going to need two pieces of something round and smooth, like a pipe. Maybe this big around, and this long." The fingers of one hand in a circle, then out in front, shoulder length. No pauses now. "Metal if you can, plastic is okay if it's strong. Can you do that?

Rich

To Lemma:

Marmot nods, "Yeah, got it." She looks to Cork, "C'mon, over by the Vee Dubs." She heads out, Cork follows. Butter is down there trying to lift it. It's way too heavy, doesn't budge.

Marmot and Cork come back with some pieces of what was probably once scaffolding. Cork calls, "This will work." He looks at you, his helmet angled to peer at you. "Right?"

What do you do?

Transcriptase

"Yes. We will make it work."

Well. The 50-foot coil is usually overkill, but the more loops I can put into the block-and-tackle the easier this will be, so I find myself in the familiar situation of wishing I had more rope. If I could do twenty loops, six feet apart, I could lift this thing myself if I had the patience.

Anyway. Work with the tools you have. First, I tie off around the artifact. Then, I lay the two pieces of pipe a few feet from each other and loop the rope back and forth between them, and drive one into the ground as hard as I can.

"Grab and pull, people."

In order to work with the most complicated machine I've ever seen, I'm going to have to use the three simplest ones: lever, pulley, ramp. It's the kind of joke only I would get, but that doesn't stop me from letting out a sharp bark of a laugh.

Rich

To Lemma:

The Dumpies don't have a clue about your laughter, but they're working hard. Marmot is acting like this is an exam or something, paying special attention.

This is what you do, right? It just takes a bit before you've got this hunk of metal and tech hauled up, and on the bed of the crawler, which is like a dump truck / garbage truck with rigged up tank treads instead of wheels. You could make one ten times better, but this thing is sturdy.

Do you drive it, or let Butter? Marmot rides in the bed, observing the Sky Mote and taking mental notes. You know, in case of another exam.

Once you three get back to your shop, how does this go?

Transcriptase

It's Butter's ride; she drives.

Reversing the process to get the thing into the workshop is much easier, since now I have my wheeled pallets and the hydraulic system I use to lift out engine blocks.

But that's the easy part.

I need to get the electronics in this thing talking to my rig, and who knows what kind of hookups that will take. Maybe I'll get lucky and see something I recognize on the outside, but I might have to crack the shell.

I probably should be trying to set Butter at ease or explain my thought process to Marmot, but I'm pretty involved.

OOC: This is going into my workspace to get to the bottom of some shit, namely what this thing is and what happened to it. Let me know what it's going to take.

Rich

To Lemma:

Sure, no problem, you can break this can open and see what makes it tick, but…
• it’s going to take weeks of work;
• this thing is powered by something nuclear, most likely, so it’s going to mean exposing yourself (plus colleagues) to serious danger;
• All the writing on it is in Russian, so you’re going to need Molotov or Hadden to help you with it; you'll need Marmot's help with moving the heavy thing around, too

OR
• it’s going to cost you a fuckton of jingle

Transcriptase

Well, I knew looking for a socket that I already had a plug for was a long shot. This is going to be a real project. In theory, that's disappointing, but I feel a familiar rush of pleasure as I start planning how it's going to go.

But I have to break the news to this crew that they're not getting the secrets out of this thing this afternoon.

"This is going to take a lot of work, and it won't be easy. It's still your find, so you can come in and check in on it any time. And if I have a breakthrough, I'll send Marmot to find you."

But Butter looks crestfallen, and I feel like I owe her more than that. She backed my play to bring it here on the promise of finding something out.

So, there's one thing I haven't tried yet, and I'm curious enough that I'm glad to have Butter as an excuse.

Something about this thing is calling for me to listen-- or Listen-- to it. And ever since... ever since that trip that brought me here, I Listen a lot better when I'm cold. And the trip took all day, so the sun is setting and the auroras are out. Even better.

So, I shut off the heater and open the door of the workshop. I shrug off the flak jacket and the fleece and sit cross-legged in my tank top on the floor in front of the object. Butter and Marmot probably have questions, but there's something about my eyes that keeps them quiet.

I close my eyes, feeling my skin prickle, and Listen.

Transcriptase

Opening my brain to the maelstrom, +Weird, 1 XP
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 3, 5. Total: 10)

Rich

To Lemma:

When you open your brain, what does it look like?

Transcriptase

So, first, goose bumps, and a chill that spreads from the back of your neck like you're being baptized in ice water. Everything gets slow, or, I have hypothesized after it's over, I experience everything very quickly.

Then the auroras get brighter and swallow everything. Or maybe everything has its own aurora, limned in green and blue. Some things are brighter than others. Sometimes the bright things are important.

There's a noise in the background, hissing and popping like radio static, and sometimes there are voices in the noise, or I think there are.

Anyway, sometimes that's all that happens, or sometimes while all that's going on I'll see something else, a more specific (though not always helpful) vision.

Always, though: cold, and auroras, and static.

Rich

To Lemma:

The chill hits, and you feel yourself falling away as your mind expands. Weightlessness.

You Listen, but you do not hear. Point of fact, you hear nothing. Utter silence.

The auroras pick up then, like halos around you, around this hunk of metal. The auroras brighten until they are blinding. Your head swims and you feel movement, flying up-up-up. It is with you, the Sky Mote.

Then, the world is below you and you sit high above, like a goddess. You spin about the world at incredible speeds.

Until you fall. Gravity pulls you down again, through fire and wind, burning and falling into the frozen world. A world unlike the one that birthed you. Foreign and changed and cold.

Alone.

Absolutely alone for decades. Pings sent to no ears, data collected for no eyes, signals, measurements, all lost, like tears in the rain.

Transcriptase

I don't know what it looked like to Butter and Marmot, but they haven't moved much so I figure it didn't last more than a second or two. Clothes don't really help with the chill I'm still feeling, but I put my coat back on anyway and fire up the heater.

I tell Butter, "It's not part of an airplane. It flew, but much, much higher and faster than that. And... it watched, or listened, to the whole world."

And to Marmot, "And we're going to figure out what it saw."

Transcriptase

So, stuff I'm working on now:

--Getting Marmot set up. Find her a place to sleep, some basic tools, space on a bench, and walk her through some basic jobs she can work on.
--Copy down all the Russian writing on the Sky Mote I can get to safely so I can get it translated.

Oh, and trying to get to the bottom of some shit: How can I handle the radiation safely?

Rich

To Lemma:

Butter, who has removed her helmet inside, and looks like this:


She's not happy about this. She takes a puff and blows it out towards your face, Lemma, "Yo, Lemma. This is a shit end of the stick for me. You said you could get me answers, now you're busy setting Marmot up with digs?!? What gives? I want my Sky Mote!"

Transcriptase

Oh, boy. My two least favorite things that aren't (a) cold and (b) death: (c) irrational personal status disputes and (d) things standing between me and a cool project.

"Look, thanks to me, you already know as much about this thing as anyone else on the planet, which is a billion times more than you knew this morning. I've charged stone killers two months' pay for less information.

There's more to learn, but it's big job, and I'm the only person in a thousand frozen miles who can do it. There are hardholders who would have to work out a payment plan to pay what I could charge for it. But I'm doing it for free, because I'm as curious as you are.

You want to walk away from that, and drag this back out to the Dump and use it as an end table, you can. It's yours. I'll help you load it up.

Or you can leave it here for a few weeks, let me work, and learn what I learn when I learn it. Heck, if you're worried, you can stay here and keep an eye on it, as long as you make yourself useful."

Rich

To Lemma:

Butter sets her jaw, leering at you for a long moment. But you don't break, do you? And you aren't lying, it's obvious. "It's mine. Whatever you find, I know first. I'll come check. Alot." She glares, like that'll make her point.

Then Butter pulls her helmet back on and stalks out. Marmot shrugs, "She's that way. Don't worry. Dumpies are rude, but we says what we means and means what we says."

Rich

--END SCENE--